PeerGuardian is not for e-mail, it's for P2P networks.
Also, I don't know how you can believe that blacklists are useless. I'm down to only about a spam a day, despite my current primary e-mail address being listed all over the internet for years now. Obviously, your choice of blacklists is important, and using other metrics as well helps.
Besides that, the forces at work in P2P spam are completely different than that of e-mail spam. I can vouch for the PeerGuardian blacklist being extremely effective at blocking probably 99% of P2P spam, and making that last 1% look far less legitimate, and far less likely to be selected.
Do you mind if I ask whether you went the MythTV route, or do your ventures pre-date even it?
I'm really don't know if MythTV was around at the time, but I certainly hadn't heard about it when I got started. I did try it out a couple years ago, after hearing so much hype about it, and was completely mystified as to why people were so enamored by it. Today, just as it was a couple years ago, it's a very disjointed, slow and clunky interface, IMHO.
My own solution is a set of about a dozen simple scripts, which have been modified numerous times now to support newer capture tools, a new remote, and a few other basic upgrades. Tools like fxtv and nuppelvideo were the only real options at the time. I don't remember exactly when, but I believe it was quite early on that I switched to using mencoder (MPlayer) for TV capture as well as reencoding, and used that for perhaps 2 years. It was only in the past year or so that TV capture cards with hardware MPEG2 encoders got reasonably cheap, and I bought one to free-up my CPU from capture, so encodes would go more quickly, and I could do other CPU-intensive tasks and not worry about the capture dropping frames and such.
I certainly don't enjoy using up a lot of CPU time for captures, but I think the mencoder way was the best over-all. The quality was a little better (at 1/4 the bitrate) than my MPEG2 capture card can manage, and it's scene-change detection made commercial-skiping just work PERFECTLY every time, and unlike MythTV, seeking was practically instantaneous. Still, now that I did spend the money to get this capture card, I'm using it, and have just grown to accept it's few drawbacks.
Now that you can get a 'real' UNIX for free, what are the compelling reasons to use Slackware GNU/Linux whose primary function is to be "...the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there."
Nice to see trolls are getting more and more positive moderation lately...
Your reading of that statement is completely wrong. Slackware doesn't try to imitate any other OS. It's really just a statement that Slackware doesn't try to be another almost-Windows clone, as just about every other major Linux distro does.
The reasons to use Linux instead of a Unix distro are too numerous to list in any single post. This has been rehashed so many times I'm sick of hearing it.
The BSDs are also "real UNIX", in every sense of the word except actual trademark licensing.
For all the Tivo users, stop whining about this. Tivo has been adding more and more restrictions for years and years now. You can't be a/. reader and claim you didn't see it comming.
I'll admit, I'm happy about this announcement. Maybe people will stop burying their head in the sand when confronted with devices that you BUY, but you don't really OWN. It also makes me all the more happy that I ignored the Tivo zealots and spent about $500 and a week's worth of time putting together a Linux DVR about 4 years ago now. Instead of losing features and being more restricted, it is GAINING features and flexibility as time passes and I upgrade software, add new hardware, etc. It's still fast enough box to become an HDTV DVR when content becomes available. I shouldn't even need any new hardware, except a 'free' cable/satellite reciever (FCC requires firewire ports on them!).
If you'll humor me as I have an 'rms' moment, here, I'd like to put all the converts to OS X on notice. Besides Tivo, I've been mentioning Apple for quite some time now. You can be quite sure that once OS X gets a decent-sized foothold, they will adopt similarly restrictive tactics. You saw the beginnings of this when they excluded all DVD-Recorders (except their own overpriced and under-featured "Superdrive") from being used with their mastering/recording software. The only big difference between Microsoft and Apple is that the former is big and rich enough that they are already enacting their lock-in and other shady techniques, while the latter is still small enough that they need to hid their plans and aspirations for future lock-in, stronger DRM, forced upgrades, higher fees, etc. So don't act surprised when Apple does this to you, either!
It uses FFMPEG, if I recall correctly, but I've not seen an FFMPEG release in some time and the website links seem to be a mess of redirection. That's not good.
I don't know what you're getting at here. FFMPEG doesn't make very frequent releases, but that's just a completely arbitrary metric. I don't think any project depends on releases of ffmpeg, they all use a CVS snapshot.
For the record, development on ffmpeg is going as quickly as it always has. Most of the "almost working" codecs have now matured, and new codecs like WMV3/WMV9/VC-1 are in the works.
It's like Ford/GM/etc pushing bigger SUVs on a market that is dealing with gas prices doubling in months, while someone else (Toyota/Honda) is selling cheaper faster hybrids that are mass-manufactured.
Err, hybrids are anything but cheap. Ford is also one of the big players in the hybrid market.
Rubbish - they are stored in normal dry room temperature conditions in jewl cases and were bought over a period of several years from a number of different suppliers.
Well then, something "magic" is happing to your discs that is not happening to anyone else on earth. I have dozens of 5+ year-old TDK CD-Rs that are ALL still doing just fine.
With development effort and popularity, technologies become cheap - just look at how cheap Flash memory is these days.
Technologies become cheap mostly because companies start selling products with much cheaper components. Writable CD/DVDs have become so incredibly cheap mainly because so many cheap junk CD-Rs are on the market. Meanwhile, the good CD-Rs from good brands really haven't gotten any cheaper over the past few years.
I have many TDK discs (one of the higher cost brands at the time) which are degrading.
Either your mishandling them, or you were unlucky enough to buy them in the "dark ages" when TDK (shortly) switched manufacturers, before discovering the crap they were getting, and switching back.
I wish someone would come up with some _cheap_ write-once solid state storage,
This isn't magic. You can't sprinkle fairy dust on cheap crap technologies, and magically convert them into high-end equipment. If you want some really long-lasting data storage, then you have to spend money to get it. Write-once MO technology might be an option, but it's not cheap, and not common enough to expect the hardware to be around in 200 years. You can always build a new drive for it, but it goes back to that "cheap" part.
The ideal backup medium is not only stable but can also be read using simple methods, so that failure of mechanism will not make the data irretrievable. For that purpose, disk drives aren't good candidates.
Using that metric, tapes aren't a good candidate either. Subject to time, the tape on which the data is stored will harden, break, and turn into dust.
A medium that is RIGID rather than needing to be pereptually flexible, is inherently better for the long-term. (ie. I'd trust glass CDs over plastic ones)
Hard drives will shatter if subjected to extreme forces, where tapes will not, but tapes will fall apart due to their very nature. Tapes are also completely vulnerable to the smallest ammouts of static or magnetic fields, where-as hard drives have built-in metal sheilding, and simply require stronger forces to do damage to the data.
In the long-term, I'd trust hard drives much more. Their electronics may fail completely, their cases may become corroded, they may almost completely fall apart, but with a clean-room and a normal equipment, you can still completely recover the data relatively easily. Good luck recovering the data from a tape after 200 years, when it is breaking into billions of fingernail-sized pieces.
In my experience, recent blank CDs (and DVDs) are lucky to make out 18 months, and many of mine are delaminating or corroding after only 12.
Sounds like you're either getting the very cheapest "free after rebate" CD-Rs you can find, or you are doing a very poor job of handling those CDs properly.
Sticking with major brands (eg. Memorex, and TDK) I've got dozens of CDs recorded 5 years ago, that are still doing fine. Of course, I've always handled CDs quite well. I store them in a closed CD cabinet, put them in decent jewel cases, etc. I also make 2 copies of anything I want to keep, but so far I haven't needed the backup copies even once.
I'm sure I will eventually, but the point is that your "18 months" assesment is so far off the mark, it's ridiculous.
There needs to be a system to move data from older mediums to newer mediums every few years as they become available. Multiple copies, with verification. Checking. Double checking.
This has been discussed before. The sheer volume of data that would have to be copied every few years is HUGE. How long would it take you to transfer a stadium full of CDs onto DVDs? How much would that cost?
There's good reason people are looking for digital technologies that are as inherently stable, long-lasting, and reliable as writing on paper.
Programming a GIF reader (or a reader for almost any documented file format) is easy - presuming you are sufficiently motivated.
You are jumping to the conclusion that C will still be common in 100 years. Since it was only even invented 35 years ago, that's very hard to predict. Remember the Y2K problems? Old mainframe languages haven't been around much longer than C, and even now, they've almost been relegated to complete obscurity. When all the guys that know the language die off, it may be very hard to learn the language from scratch from the few documents that remain.
We might not even be using binary systems anymore. The most basic computers came about only ~70 years ago. Who's to say they will be exactly the same in 100 years time?
Sure, displaying GIFs to a screen may be fairly easy, but how do you export viewable GIFs to a neural implant?
Survival and longevity of antique media are a much bigger problem.
A bigger problem, definately, but that's not to say the former isn't an issue.
Users realize they don't have XP when they try to do something that they used to, or when they try to download MSN. Then, the general line of thinking is "I can't get anything done with Linux, Linux suck" and they get a pirated copy of XP.
How can ANY operating system hope to appeal to any users like that? Other than becoming an exact clone of Windows XP, and getting 100% binary compatibility, what can be done? If users aren't willing to put even a little bit of effort into something that is different than Windows, no OS, no matter how good, can ever hope to convert them.
Perhaps the software is good enough, and the mindset is the problem.
In fact laptops make great servers as they come with a built-in UPS.
Not IMHO. Laptops are very fragile, in many ways. They usually come with only a single tiny fan that dies pretty quickly, and can be expensive to replace. Laptops hard drives are simply not designed for always-on operation, and really need significant cooling if you want to do that. But of course it's very difficult to install an extra fan into a laptop.
You talk about the battery in notebooks like a UPS, but you'll find out quick quickly they weren't designed for that kind of use. Lead-acid batteries used in real UPSes can last for a very long time with UPS load patterns, but the lithium ion batteries in notebooks probably won't last for a couple years. The batteries were designed to be used regularly, not to sit there being constantly topped-off. A lot has been said about how quickly lithium ion batteries lose their capacity if left stored at 90-100% charged for long periods of time.
And besides that, laptops just don't have great hardware for server tasks. You have some built-in Realtek chipset, very little cache, RAM that is far slower than what you get in much cheaper PCs, etc. What is it about Laptops that makes them good servers?
What happens when they make a 140gb 2.5" HDD? I have had headache after headache with desktop systems and firewire enclosures that were not fully LBA48 compliant, and so they would detect 160, 180, 200, and 250gb HDs as 128gb. (or not at all...)
This is (almost) a non-issue.
Windows 95/98/ME is dead. Every OS that isn't DOS-based completely ignores the BIOS drive specs, and detects the specs on it's own, at boot time. You can put a 300GB drive in a 486, and it will boot the OS (as long as the loader is in the first few hundred MBs), and the OS will detect the 300GB hard drive, and be able to use all of it.
Some BIOSes crashed when autodetecting the size of a larger hard drive, but you can manually change those settings to something reasonable, and it will work just fine.
I'm sure I'll be hurting for space by start of next year.
External USB2/Firefire hard drives, my friend... The bus power is just enough to spin-up a lower-power 2.5" drive, so you've got a lot of options. Even if I could have a 2.5" 300GB drive in my notebook, I wouldn't want to. Much easier to back-up external drives, rather than leaving your notebook on, and transfering over the network or whatnot.
1) If it's something that goes on the shelf/table and just sits there, forget the warranty: TV, DVD player, stereo, laptop, PC, etc
Monitors are one where I WOULD strongly recomend a warranty. The cheap-ass monitors from Best Buy routinely die on me shortly after the 1-year manufacturer's warranty ends. TV repair shops can't get the necessary specs from the random Chinese manufacturers, but Best Buy can.
For $50 extra I've had my cheap-ass monitor fixed about 4 times now. It also strikes me as funny that the price for almost exactly the same monitor has gone-up about 1/3rd over the past 3 years.
Anyone using a slightly older version of Firefox gets redirected to a "you need to upgrade" page. How nice, I can't find out about a security vulnerability that exists in both new and old versions of Firefox, because I'm not using a more recent version of Firefox...
I can read that page using any non-Mozilla-based browser though! So the title of that page: "What Firefox and Mozilla users should know" is quite ironic, since it's inordinately hard for Firefox/Mozilla users to SEE that page.
No streaming video I've seen has ever managed to play without skipping, so I'd have to conclude that non-streaming, download-and-watch video would propably be the best option for this task.
Your opinion is based on incorrect facts, and is also not of the point of view of a provider of content.
Flip book is video.
Only if you want to get pedantic about it. I think my point was quite clear, so I'm going to completely ignore this little rant of yours.
sooo... you're saying you support oppression of opinions that are against opressing people?
I never suggested suppression of any opinions.
I disagree with the parent on the point, however I never suggested that he should be censored or suppressed. I also don't agree that his post is in support of oppressed people.
I do, however, support the reasonable suppression of factually incorrect statements, particularly those that can cause harm.
Currently people are all hyped about the flooding [...] The real issue is hurricanes.
I certainly can't agree with that. What's the largest number of people ever killed by a hurricane in the USA? The death-toll from the flooding isn't in yet, but it looks to be in the thousands. The flooding is the most serious issue. Hurricanes are terrible but not nearly so destructive, either in monetary terms, or in terms of fatalities.
Slashdot Mirror
PeerGuardian is not for e-mail, it's for P2P networks.
Also, I don't know how you can believe that blacklists are useless. I'm down to only about a spam a day, despite my current primary e-mail address being listed all over the internet for years now. Obviously, your choice of blacklists is important, and using other metrics as well helps.
Besides that, the forces at work in P2P spam are completely different than that of e-mail spam. I can vouch for the PeerGuardian blacklist being extremely effective at blocking probably 99% of P2P spam, and making that last 1% look far less legitimate, and far less likely to be selected.
I'm really don't know if MythTV was around at the time, but I certainly hadn't heard about it when I got started. I did try it out a couple years ago, after hearing so much hype about it, and was completely mystified as to why people were so enamored by it. Today, just as it was a couple years ago, it's a very disjointed, slow and clunky interface, IMHO.
My own solution is a set of about a dozen simple scripts, which have been modified numerous times now to support newer capture tools, a new remote, and a few other basic upgrades. Tools like fxtv and nuppelvideo were the only real options at the time. I don't remember exactly when, but I believe it was quite early on that I switched to using mencoder (MPlayer) for TV capture as well as reencoding, and used that for perhaps 2 years. It was only in the past year or so that TV capture cards with hardware MPEG2 encoders got reasonably cheap, and I bought one to free-up my CPU from capture, so encodes would go more quickly, and I could do other CPU-intensive tasks and not worry about the capture dropping frames and such.
I certainly don't enjoy using up a lot of CPU time for captures, but I think the mencoder way was the best over-all. The quality was a little better (at 1/4 the bitrate) than my MPEG2 capture card can manage, and it's scene-change detection made commercial-skiping just work PERFECTLY every time, and unlike MythTV, seeking was practically instantaneous. Still, now that I did spend the money to get this capture card, I'm using it, and have just grown to accept it's few drawbacks.
Nice to see trolls are getting more and more positive moderation lately...
Your reading of that statement is completely wrong. Slackware doesn't try to imitate any other OS. It's really just a statement that Slackware doesn't try to be another almost-Windows clone, as just about every other major Linux distro does.
The reasons to use Linux instead of a Unix distro are too numerous to list in any single post. This has been rehashed so many times I'm sick of hearing it.
The BSDs are also "real UNIX", in every sense of the word except actual trademark licensing.
Or you can just tell the dealer you won't buy the vehicle if you can't get one without OnStar.
Or you could tear the guts of the unit out of your dash, rendering it useless.
For all the Tivo users, stop whining about this. Tivo has been adding more and more restrictions for years and years now. You can't be a /. reader and claim you didn't see it comming.
I'll admit, I'm happy about this announcement. Maybe people will stop burying their head in the sand when confronted with devices that you BUY, but you don't really OWN. It also makes me all the more happy that I ignored the Tivo zealots and spent about $500 and a week's worth of time putting together a Linux DVR about 4 years ago now. Instead of losing features and being more restricted, it is GAINING features and flexibility as time passes and I upgrade software, add new hardware, etc. It's still fast enough box to become an HDTV DVR when content becomes available. I shouldn't even need any new hardware, except a 'free' cable/satellite reciever (FCC requires firewire ports on them!).
If you'll humor me as I have an 'rms' moment, here, I'd like to put all the converts to OS X on notice. Besides Tivo, I've been mentioning Apple for quite some time now. You can be quite sure that once OS X gets a decent-sized foothold, they will adopt similarly restrictive tactics. You saw the beginnings of this when they excluded all DVD-Recorders (except their own overpriced and under-featured "Superdrive") from being used with their mastering/recording software. The only big difference between Microsoft and Apple is that the former is big and rich enough that they are already enacting their lock-in and other shady techniques, while the latter is still small enough that they need to hid their plans and aspirations for future lock-in, stronger DRM, forced upgrades, higher fees, etc. So don't act surprised when Apple does this to you, either!
I don't know what you're getting at here. FFMPEG doesn't make very frequent releases, but that's just a completely arbitrary metric. I don't think any project depends on releases of ffmpeg, they all use a CVS snapshot.
For the record, development on ffmpeg is going as quickly as it always has. Most of the "almost working" codecs have now matured, and new codecs like WMV3/WMV9/VC-1 are in the works.
It does. It's supported outputting to Theora for a long time, but it's only had full editing support for the past few months.
In fact, it's right on the front-page of Theora.org
Err, hybrids are anything but cheap. Ford is also one of the big players in the hybrid market.
Well then, something "magic" is happing to your discs that is not happening to anyone else on earth. I have dozens of 5+ year-old TDK CD-Rs that are ALL still doing just fine.
Technologies become cheap mostly because companies start selling products with much cheaper components. Writable CD/DVDs have become so incredibly cheap mainly because so many cheap junk CD-Rs are on the market. Meanwhile, the good CD-Rs from good brands really haven't gotten any cheaper over the past few years.
Either your mishandling them, or you were unlucky enough to buy them in the "dark ages" when TDK (shortly) switched manufacturers, before discovering the crap they were getting, and switching back.
This isn't magic. You can't sprinkle fairy dust on cheap crap technologies, and magically convert them into high-end equipment. If you want some really long-lasting data storage, then you have to spend money to get it. Write-once MO technology might be an option, but it's not cheap, and not common enough to expect the hardware to be around in 200 years. You can always build a new drive for it, but it goes back to that "cheap" part.
Using that metric, tapes aren't a good candidate either. Subject to time, the tape on which the data is stored will harden, break, and turn into dust.
A medium that is RIGID rather than needing to be pereptually flexible, is inherently better for the long-term. (ie. I'd trust glass CDs over plastic ones)
Hard drives will shatter if subjected to extreme forces, where tapes will not, but tapes will fall apart due to their very nature. Tapes are also completely vulnerable to the smallest ammouts of static or magnetic fields, where-as hard drives have built-in metal sheilding, and simply require stronger forces to do damage to the data.
In the long-term, I'd trust hard drives much more. Their electronics may fail completely, their cases may become corroded, they may almost completely fall apart, but with a clean-room and a normal equipment, you can still completely recover the data relatively easily. Good luck recovering the data from a tape after 200 years, when it is breaking into billions of fingernail-sized pieces.
Sounds like you're either getting the very cheapest "free after rebate" CD-Rs you can find, or you are doing a very poor job of handling those CDs properly.
Sticking with major brands (eg. Memorex, and TDK) I've got dozens of CDs recorded 5 years ago, that are still doing fine. Of course, I've always handled CDs quite well. I store them in a closed CD cabinet, put them in decent jewel cases, etc. I also make 2 copies of anything I want to keep, but so far I haven't needed the backup copies even once.
I'm sure I will eventually, but the point is that your "18 months" assesment is so far off the mark, it's ridiculous.
This has been discussed before. The sheer volume of data that would have to be copied every few years is HUGE. How long would it take you to transfer a stadium full of CDs onto DVDs? How much would that cost?
There's good reason people are looking for digital technologies that are as inherently stable, long-lasting, and reliable as writing on paper.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.htm
You are jumping to the conclusion that C will still be common in 100 years. Since it was only even invented 35 years ago, that's very hard to predict. Remember the Y2K problems? Old mainframe languages haven't been around much longer than C, and even now, they've almost been relegated to complete obscurity. When all the guys that know the language die off, it may be very hard to learn the language from scratch from the few documents that remain.
We might not even be using binary systems anymore. The most basic computers came about only ~70 years ago. Who's to say they will be exactly the same in 100 years time?
Sure, displaying GIFs to a screen may be fairly easy, but how do you export viewable GIFs to a neural implant?
A bigger problem, definately, but that's not to say the former isn't an issue.
How can ANY operating system hope to appeal to any users like that? Other than becoming an exact clone of Windows XP, and getting 100% binary compatibility, what can be done? If users aren't willing to put even a little bit of effort into something that is different than Windows, no OS, no matter how good, can ever hope to convert them.
Perhaps the software is good enough, and the mindset is the problem.
Not IMHO. Laptops are very fragile, in many ways. They usually come with only a single tiny fan that dies pretty quickly, and can be expensive to replace. Laptops hard drives are simply not designed for always-on operation, and really need significant cooling if you want to do that. But of course it's very difficult to install an extra fan into a laptop.
You talk about the battery in notebooks like a UPS, but you'll find out quick quickly they weren't designed for that kind of use. Lead-acid batteries used in real UPSes can last for a very long time with UPS load patterns, but the lithium ion batteries in notebooks probably won't last for a couple years. The batteries were designed to be used regularly, not to sit there being constantly topped-off. A lot has been said about how quickly lithium ion batteries lose their capacity if left stored at 90-100% charged for long periods of time.
And besides that, laptops just don't have great hardware for server tasks. You have some built-in Realtek chipset, very little cache, RAM that is far slower than what you get in much cheaper PCs, etc. What is it about Laptops that makes them good servers?
Not always. Little things like data density can really make-up for small differences in RPMs.
If the 4200RPM drives were single-platter, and the 5200RPM drive had, say, 4 platters, it's entirely possible the 4200s would come out ahead.
This is (almost) a non-issue.
Windows 95/98/ME is dead. Every OS that isn't DOS-based completely ignores the BIOS drive specs, and detects the specs on it's own, at boot time. You can put a 300GB drive in a 486, and it will boot the OS (as long as the loader is in the first few hundred MBs), and the OS will detect the 300GB hard drive, and be able to use all of it.
Some BIOSes crashed when autodetecting the size of a larger hard drive, but you can manually change those settings to something reasonable, and it will work just fine.
External USB2/Firefire hard drives, my friend... The bus power is just enough to spin-up a lower-power 2.5" drive, so you've got a lot of options. Even if I could have a 2.5" 300GB drive in my notebook, I wouldn't want to. Much easier to back-up external drives, rather than leaving your notebook on, and transfering over the network or whatnot.
Monitors are one where I WOULD strongly recomend a warranty. The cheap-ass monitors from Best Buy routinely die on me shortly after the 1-year manufacturer's warranty ends. TV repair shops can't get the necessary specs from the random Chinese manufacturers, but Best Buy can.
For $50 extra I've had my cheap-ass monitor fixed about 4 times now. It also strikes me as funny that the price for almost exactly the same monitor has gone-up about 1/3rd over the past 3 years.
That's a GREAT link there...
Anyone using a slightly older version of Firefox gets redirected to a "you need to upgrade" page. How nice, I can't find out about a security vulnerability that exists in both new and old versions of Firefox, because I'm not using a more recent version of Firefox...
I can read that page using any non-Mozilla-based browser though! So the title of that page: "What Firefox and Mozilla users should know" is quite ironic, since it's inordinately hard for Firefox/Mozilla users to SEE that page.
Your opinion is based on incorrect facts, and is also not of the point of view of a provider of content.
Only if you want to get pedantic about it. I think my point was quite clear, so I'm going to completely ignore this little rant of yours.
I never suggested suppression of any opinions.
I disagree with the parent on the point, however I never suggested that he should be censored or suppressed. I also don't agree that his post is in support of oppressed people.
I do, however, support the reasonable suppression of factually incorrect statements, particularly those that can cause harm.
I certainly can't agree with that. What's the largest number of people ever killed by a hurricane in the USA? The death-toll from the flooding isn't in yet, but it looks to be in the thousands. The flooding is the most serious issue. Hurricanes are terrible but not nearly so destructive, either in monetary terms, or in terms of fatalities.
What the hell is that, a quadruple negative?